Knowledgebase framework system

ABSTRACT

A system, method and article of manufacture are provided for a knowledgebase framework. Information is obtained from at least one source utilizing a network. Utilizing a knowledge model, an index is generated for the obtained information. The generated index includes a plurality of items each associated with at least some of the obtained information. Utilizing the network, the generated index is displayed to a user. The user is permitted to select an least one of the items of the index. The information associated with the selected item is then displayed to the user utilizing the network.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to information management and retrievaland more particularly to frameworks for obtaining, managing, andproviding information from a plurality of information sources.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

People who use computer systems and networks often need to look upinformation about the system they are using. Traditionally, informationwas stored in books and manuals, which were often kept physically nearto the computer. If a user needed to look up information, he turned to asingle source—the paper manuals stored conveniently nearby.

Currently, however, the amount of technical information available abouta given computer system can be very large and can be stored at a widevariety of sources. Information is often provided to customers in“online” form, dispensing entirely with paper copies. This onlineinformation includes online databases, CD ROM databases, proprietaryhelp systems, and online manuals. Large amounts of technical informationare also available from third party online sources and from sources suchas the World Wide Web.

Amid an apparent wealth of online information, people still haveproblems finding the information they need. Online information retrievalmay have problems including those related to inappropriate userinterface designs and to poor or inappropriate organization andstructure of the information. Storage of information online in a varietyof forms leads to certain information retrieval problems, several ofwhich are described below.

The existence of a variety of information sources leads to the lack of aunified information space. An “information space” is the set of allsources of information that is available to a user at a given time orsetting. When information is stored in many formats and at many sources,a user is forced to spend too much “overhead” on discovering andremembering where different information is located (e.g., onlinetechnical books, manual pages (“manpages”), release notes, helpinformation, etc.). The user also spends a large amount of timeremembering how to find information in each delivery mechanism. Thus, itis difficult for the user to remember where potentially relevantinformation might be, and the user is forced to jump between multipledifferent online tools to find it.

The existence of a variety of information sources leads to informationstrategies that lack cohesion. Users currently must learn to use andremember a variety of metaphors, user interfaces, and searchingtechniques for each delivery mechanism and class of information. No onetype of interface suits all users. Furthermore, a user may needdifferent types of searching techniques and interfaces, depending on thecircumstances and the nature of the specific information needed.

The existence of a variety of information sources leads to lack of linksbetween sources of information. Conventional delivery mechanisms oftensupport only loosely structured navigation, such as keyword search orhyperlinks. Such mechanisms provide the user with only a localorganization of information instead of providing a global picture of theinformation space.

The existence of a variety of information sources leads to frustrationif the information uses a wide variety of terms or uses terms notfamiliar to the user. In addition, users employ concepts and termsdifferently than technical writers and authors. Conventional deliverymechanisms often rely on a keyword search as a primary means of findinginformation. If the user's vocabulary does not sufficiently overlap withindices employed by a delivery mechanism, a keyword search will resultin a high percentage of disappointing and frustrating “term misses.” Theonly recovery method for a failed keyword search is simply to guess atbetter query.

The existence of a variety of information sources leads to titles anddescriptions of the information that are not intuitive to a user. Usersoften conceptually group and describe problems differently than doinformation organizers and writers. If, for example, a user does notknow the title of a book or the name of a database, he may not be ableto find the information stored therein.

As computer systems become more complex and as sources of onlineinformation proliferate, it becomes more and more difficult for users tolocate the information they need. Even worse, users may not always beaware of all the existing sources of information. Moreover, certainusers may not use certain sources of information, even though they areaware of them, if they are not familiar with the interface or find ittoo difficult to use.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

A system, method and article of manufacture are provided for aknowledgebase framework. Information is obtained from at least onesource utilizing a network. Utilizing a knowledge model, an index isgenerated for the obtained information. The generated index includes aplurality of items each associated with at least some of the obtainedinformation. Utilizing the network, the generated index is displayed toa user. The user is permitted to select an least one of the items of theindex. The information associated with the selected item is thendisplayed to the user utilizing the network.

In an aspect of the present invention, one of the sources from whichinformation is obtained may be an internal source. In another aspect ofthe present invention, one of the sources from which information isobtained may be an external source accessible utilizing a wide arenetwork. In a further aspect of the present invention, the informationobtained from the sources may include pharmaceutical information. In yeta further aspect of the present invention, displaying of the informationassociated with the selected item (or entry) to the user may alsoinclude utilizing the network to retrieve the associated informationfrom the source from which the associated information was obtained. Ineven another aspect of the present invention, the network may be capableof communicating using TCP/IP protocol.

In an embodiment of the present invention, the network may be utilizedto monitor one or more of the sources for updated information relatingto one or more items in the index. In such an embodiment, when updatedinformation is detected at one of the knowledge sources, a notice may begenerated regarding the updated information. This notice may then betransmitted to the user utilizing the network to notify the user of theupdated information. As an option, the user may be allowed to select thesource(s) to be monitored for updates or other changes.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the user may bepermitted to input a search term utilizing the network. The index may besearched for items associated with the search term. Items of the indexassociated with the search term may then be displayed to the userutilizing the network.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The invention will be better understood when consideration is given tothe following detailed description thereof. Such description makesreference to the annexed drawings wherein:

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a hardware implementation of oneembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a knowledgebase framework in accordancewith an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of the knowledgebase frameworkillustrating how the index may be used as a user's primary gateway to awide variety of information sources in accordance with an embodiment ofthe present invention;

FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of an illustrative knowledge model inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 5 illustrates a flowchart for a process for a knowledgebaseframework in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 6 illustrates a flowchart for a process for a knowledge model inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 7 is a schematic illustration of a log in frame for permitting auser to log into the knowledgebase framework utilizing a network inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 8 is a schematic illustration of a search and browse frame of thedecision support application for permitting a user browse the knowledgemodel-based index in accordance with an embodiment of the presentinvention;

FIG. 9 is a schematic illustration of the items of the knowledgemodel-base index displayed in the search and browse frame upon selectionof the cardiology/vascular diseases item in FIG. 8 in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 10 is a schematic illustration of the items of the knowledgemodel-base index displayed in the search and browse frame upon selectionof the ACE biological target item in FIG. 9 in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 11 is a schematic illustration of illustrative items of theknowledge model-base index displayed in the search and browse frame uponselection of the captopril compound item in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 12 is a schematic illustration of a browser frame which displaysinformation from knowledge source relating to an item upon selection ofthe visit source selection in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention;

FIG. 13 is a schematic illustration of an exemplary display of thedisplay bar upon selection of a scientist/person item in accordance withan embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 14 is a schematic illustration of illustrative items of theknowledge model-base index displayed in the search and browse frame uponselection of a patent item in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention;

FIG. 15 is a schematic illustration of a browser frame which displaysinformation from knowledge source relating to the selected patent itemof FIG. 14 upon selection of the visit source selection in accordancewith an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 16 illustrates a recent news frame that the user may access afterlogging on to the network in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention;

FIG. 17 illustrates a flowchart for a process for monitoring informationin a knowledgebase framework in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention;

FIG. 18A is a schematic illustration of a process map displayed in aresearch frame for use in a knowledgebase framework in accordance withan embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 18B is a schematic illustration of an illustrative template for aprocess map displayed in the research frame in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 18C illustrates an inbox for managing email messages displayed inan organizer frame for use in a knowledgebase framework in accordancewith an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 18D illustrates a calendar for managing events and appointments ofa user displayed in an organizer frame for use in a knowledgebaseframework in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 19 is a schematic diagram of an exemplary system architecture inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 20 is a flowchart of the system in accordance with an embodiment ofthe present invention;

FIG. 21 is a flowchart of a parsing unit of the system in accordancewith an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 22 is a flowchart for pattern matching in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 23 is a flowchart for a search unit in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 24 is a flowchart for overall system processing in accordance withan embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 25 is a flowchart of topic processing in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 26 is a flowchart of meeting record processing in accordance withan embodiment of the present invention;

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

Embodiments of the present invention show how the concept of knowledgeintegration can be applied in the business world, especially in thepharmaceutical industry. Aspects of the present invention may betargeted for users active in the drug discovery process such asscientist and other researchers. Embodiments of the present inventionmay use knowledge integration technology to semantically integrate theknowledge capital located in various isolated repositories in theInternet. The information from this repositories are extracted and areclassified based on various facets such as, for example drug, chemicalcompound, biological target, scientist, etc. As the results, embodimentsof the present invention can graphically show users how the variousfacets of the information are related to each other.

An embodiment of a system in accordance with the present invention ispreferably practiced in the context of a personal computer such as anIBM compatible personal computer, Apple Macintosh computer or UNIX basedworkstation. A representative hardware environment is depicted in FIG.1, which illustrates a typical hardware configuration of a workstationin accordance with a preferred embodiment having a central processingunit 110, such as a microprocessor, and a number of other unitsinterconnected via a system bus 112. The workstation shown in FIG. 1includes a Random Access Memory (RAM) 114, Read Only Memory (ROM) 116,an I/O adapter 118 for connecting peripheral devices such as diskstorage units 120 to the bus 112, a user interface adapter 122 forconnecting a keyboard 124, a mouse 126, a speaker 128, a microphone 132,and/or other user interface devices such as a touch screen (not shown)to the bus 112, communication adapter 134 for connecting the workstationto a communication network (e.g., a data processing network) and adisplay adapter 136 for connecting the bus 112 to a display device 138.The workstation typically has resident thereon an operating system suchas the Microsoft Windows NT or Windows/95 Operating System (OS), the IBMOS/2 operating system, the MAC OS, or UNIX operating system. Thoseskilled in the art will appreciate that the present invention may alsobe implemented on platforms and operating systems other than thosementioned.

A preferred embodiment is written using JAVA, C, and the C++ languageand utilizes object oriented programming methodology. Object orientedprogramming (OOP) has become increasingly used to develop complexapplications. As OOP moves toward the mainstream of software design anddevelopment, various software solutions require adaptation to make useof the benefits of OOP. A need exists for these principles of OOP to beapplied to a messaging interface of an electronic messaging system suchthat a set of OOP classes and objects for the messaging interface can beprovided.

OOP is a process of developing computer software using objects,including the steps of analyzing the problem, designing the system, andconstructing the program. An object is a software package that containsboth data and a collection of related structures and procedures. Sinceit contains both data and a collection of structures and procedures, itcan be visualized as a self-sufficient component that does not requireother additional structures, procedures or data to perform its specifictask. OOP, therefore, views a computer program as a collection oflargely autonomous components, called objects, each of which isresponsible for a specific task. This concept of packaging data,structures, and procedures together in one component or module is calledencapsulation.

In general, OOP components are reusable software modules which presentan interface that conforms to an object model and which are accessed atrun-time through a component integration architecture. A componentintegration architecture is a set of architecture mechanisms which allowsoftware modules in different process spaces to utilize each otherscapabilities or functions. This is generally done by assuming a commoncomponent object model on which to build the architecture. It isworthwhile to differentiate between an object and a class of objects atthis point. An object is a single instance of the class of objects,which is often just called a class. A class of objects can be viewed asa blueprint, from which many objects can be formed.

OOP allows the programmer to create an object that is a part of anotherobject. For example, the object representing a piston engine is said tohave a composition-relationship with the object representing a piston.In reality, a piston engine comprises a piston, valves and many othercomponents; the fact that a piston is an element of a piston engine canbe logically and semantically represented in OOP by two objects.

OOP also allows creation of an object that “depends from” anotherobject. If there are two objects, one representing a piston engine andthe other representing a piston engine wherein the piston is made ofceramic, then the relationship between the two objects is not that ofcomposition. A ceramic piston engine does not make up a piston engine.Rather it is merely one kind of piston engine that has one morelimitation than the piston engine; its piston is made of ceramic. Inthis case, the object representing the ceramic piston engine is called aderived object, and it inherits all of the aspects of the objectrepresenting the piston engine and adds further limitation or detail toit. The object representing the ceramic piston engine “depends from” theobject representing the piston engine. The relationship between theseobjects is called inheritance.

When the object or class representing the ceramic piston engine inheritsall of the aspects of the objects representing the piston engine, itinherits the thermal characteristics of a standard piston defined in thepiston engine class. However, the ceramic piston engine object overridesthese ceramic specific thermal characteristics, which are typicallydifferent from those associated with a metal piston. It skips over theoriginal and uses new functions related to ceramic pistons. Differentkinds of piston engines have different characteristics, but may have thesame underlying functions associated with it (e.g., how many pistons inthe engine, ignition sequences, lubrication, etc.). To access each ofthese functions in any piston engine object, a programmer would call thesame functions with the same names, but each type of piston engine mayhave different/overriding implementations of functions behind the samename. This ability to hide different implementations of a functionbehind the same name is called polymorphism and it greatly simplifiescommunication among objects.

With the concepts of composition-relationship, encapsulation,inheritance and polymorphism, an object can represent just aboutanything in the real world. In fact, one's logical perception of thereality is the only limit on determining the kinds of things that canbecome objects in object-oriented software. Some typical categories areas follows:

-   -   Objects can represent physical objects, such as automobiles in a        traffic-flow simulation, electrical components in a        circuit-design program, countries in an economics model, or        aircraft in an air-traffic-control system.    -   Objects can represent elements of the computer-user environment        such as windows, menus or graphics objects.    -   An object can represent an inventory, such as a personnel file        or a table of the latitudes and longitudes of cities.    -   An object can represent user-defined data types such as time,        angles, and complex numbers, or points on the plane.

With this enormous capability of an object to represent just about anylogically separable matters, OOP allows the software developer to designand implement a computer program that is a model of some aspects ofreality, whether that reality is a physical entity, a process, a system,or a composition of matter. Since the object can represent anything, thesoftware developer can create an object which can be used as a componentin a larger software project in the future.

If 90% of a new OOP software program consists of proven, existingcomponents made from preexisting reusable objects, then only theremaining 10% of the new software project has to be written and testedfrom scratch. Since 90% already came from an inventory of extensivelytested reusable objects, the potential domain from which an error couldoriginate is 10% of the program. As a result, OOP enables softwaredevelopers to build objects out of other, previously built objects.

This process closely resembles complex machinery being built out ofassemblies and sub-assemblies. OOP technology, therefore, makes softwareengineering more like hardware engineering in that software is builtfrom existing components, which are available to the developer asobjects. All this adds up to an improved quality of the software as wellas an increased speed of its development.

Programming languages are beginning to fully support the OOP principles,such as encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism, andcomposition-relationship. With the advent of the C++ language, manycommercial software developers have embraced OOP. C++ is an OOP languagethat offers a fast, machine-executable code. Furthermore, C++ issuitable for both commercial-application and systems-programmingprojects. For now, C++ appears to be the most popular choice among manyOOP programmers, but there is a host of other OOP languages, such asSmalltalk, Common Lisp Object System (CLOS), and Eiffel. Additionally,OOP capabilities are being added to more traditional popular computerprogramming languages such as Pascal.

The benefits of object classes can be summarized, as follows:

-   -   Objects and their corresponding classes break down complex        programming problems into many smaller, simpler problems.    -   Encapsulation enforces data abstraction through the organization        of data into small, independent objects that can communicate        with each other. Encapsulation protects the data in an object        from accidental damage, but allows other objects to interact        with that data by calling the object's member functions and        structures.    -   Subclassing and inheritance make it possible to extend and        modify objects through deriving new kinds of objects from the        standard classes available in the system. Thus, new capabilities        are created without having to start from scratch.    -   Polymorphism and multiple inheritance make it possible for        different programmers to mix and match characteristics of many        different classes and create specialized objects that can still        work with related objects in predictable ways.    -   Class hierarchies and containment hierarchies provide a flexible        mechanism for modeling real-world objects and the relationships        among them.    -   Libraries of reusable classes are useful in many situations, but        they also have some limitations. For example:    -   Complexity. In a complex system, the class hierarchies for        related classes can become extremely confusing, with many dozens        or even hundreds of classes.    -   Flow of control. A program written with the aid of class        libraries is still responsible for the flow of control (i.e., it        must control the interactions among all the objects created from        a particular library). The programmer has to decide which        functions to call at what times for which kinds of objects.    -   Duplication of effort. Although class libraries allow        programmers to use and reuse many small pieces of code, each        programmer puts those pieces together in a different way. Two        different programmers can use the same set of class libraries to        write two programs that do exactly the same thing but whose        internal structure (i.e., design) may be quite different,        depending on hundreds of small decisions each programmer makes        along the way. Inevitably, similar pieces of code end up doing        similar things in slightly different ways and do not work as        well together as they should.

Class libraries are very flexible. As programs grow more complex, moreprogrammers are forced to reinvent basic solutions to basic problemsover and over again. A relatively new extension of the class libraryconcept is to have a framework of class libraries. This framework ismore complex and consists of significant collections of collaboratingclasses that capture both the small scale patterns and major mechanismsthat implement the common requirements and design in a specificapplication domain. They were first developed to free applicationprogrammers from the chores involved in displaying menus, windows,dialog boxes, and other standard user interface elements for personalcomputers.

Frameworks also represent a change in the way programmers think aboutthe interaction between the code they write and code written by others.In the early days of procedural programming, the programmer calledlibraries provided by the operating system to perform certain tasks, butbasically the program executed down the page from start to finish, andthe programmer was solely responsible for the flow of control. This wasappropriate for printing out paychecks, calculating a mathematicaltable, or solving other problems with a program that executed in justone way.

The development of graphical user interfaces began to turn thisprocedural programming arrangement inside out. These interfaces allowthe user, rather than program logic, to drive the program and decidewhen certain actions should be performed. Today, most personal computersoftware accomplishes this by means of an event loop which monitors themouse, keyboard, and other sources of external events and calls theappropriate parts of the programmer's code according to actions that theuser performs. The programmer no longer determines the order in whichevents occur. Instead, a program is divided into separate pieces thatare called at unpredictable times and in an unpredictable order. Byrelinquishing control in this way to users, the developer creates aprogram that is much easier to use. Nevertheless, individual pieces ofthe program written by the developer still call libraries provided bythe operating system to accomplish certain tasks, and the programmermust still determine the flow of control within each piece after it'scalled by the event loop. Application code still “sits on top of” thesystem.

Even event loop programs require programmers to write a lot of code thatshould not need to be written separately for every application. Theconcept of an application framework carries the event loop conceptfurther. Instead of dealing with all the nuts and bolts of constructingbasic menus, windows, and dialog boxes and then making these things allwork together, programmers using application frameworks start withworking application code and basic user interface elements in place.Subsequently, they build from there by replacing some of the genericcapabilities of the framework with the specific capabilities of theintended application.

Application frameworks reduce the total amount of code that a programmerhas to write from scratch. However, because the framework is really ageneric application that displays windows, supports copy and paste, andso on, the programmer can also relinquish control to a greater degreethan event loop programs permit. The framework code takes care of almostall event handling and flow of control, and the programmer's code iscalled only when the framework needs it (e.g., to create or manipulate aproprietary data structure).

A programmer writing a framework program not only relinquishes controlto the user (as is also true for event loop programs), but alsorelinquishes the detailed flow of control within the program to theframework. This approach allows the creation of more complex systemsthat work together in interesting ways, as opposed to isolated programs,having custom code, being created over and over again for similarproblems.

Thus, as is explained above, a framework basically is a collection ofcooperating classes that make up a reusable design solution for a givenproblem domain. It typically includes objects that provide defaultbehavior (e.g., for menus and windows), and programmers use it byinheriting some of that default behavior and overriding other behaviorso that the framework calls application code at the appropriate times.

There are three main differences between frameworks and class libraries:

-   -   Behavior versus protocol. Class libraries are essentially        collections of behaviors that you can call when you want those        individual behaviors in your program. A framework, on the other        hand, provides not only behavior but also the protocol or set of        rules that govern the ways in which behaviors can be combined,        including rules for what a programmer is supposed to provide        versus what the framework provides.    -   Call versus override. With a class library, the code the        programmer instantiates objects and calls their member        functions. It's possible to instantiate and call objects in the        same way with a framework (i.e., to treat the framework as a        class library), but to take full advantage of a framework's        reusable design, a programmer typically writes code that        overrides and is called by the framework. The framework manages        the flow of control among its objects. Writing a program        involves dividing responsibilities among the various pieces of        software that are called by the framework rather than specifying        how the different pieces should work together.    -   Implementation versus design. With class libraries, programmers        reuse only implementations, whereas with frameworks, they reuse        design. A framework embodies the way a family of related        programs or pieces of software work. It represents a generic        design solution that can be adapted to a variety of specific        problems in a given domain. For example, a single framework can        embody the way a user interface works, even though two different        user interfaces created with the same framework might solve        quite different interface problems.

Thus, through the development of frameworks for solutions to variousproblems and programming tasks, significant reductions in the design anddevelopment effort for software can be achieved. A preferred embodimentof the invention utilizes HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to implementdocuments on the Internet together with a general-purpose securecommunication protocol for a transport medium between the client and theNewco. HTTP or other protocols could be readily substituted for HTMLwithout undue experimentation. Information on these products isavailable in T. Berners-Lee, D. Connoly, “RFC 1866: Hypertext MarkupLanguage—2.0” (November 1995); and R. Fielding, H, Frystyk, T.Berners-Lee, J. Gettys and J. C. Mogul, “Hypertext TransferProtocol—HTTP/1.1: HTTP Working Group Internet Draft” (May 2, 1996).HTML is a simple data format used to create hypertext documents that areportable from one platform to another. HTML documents are SGML documentswith generic semantics that are appropriate for representing informationfrom a wide range of domains. HTML has been in use by the World-Wide Webglobal information initiative since 1990. HTML is an application of ISOStandard 8879; 1986 Information Processing Text and Office Systems;Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).

To date, Web development tools have been limited in their ability tocreate dynamic Web applications which span from client to server andinteroperate with existing computing resources. Until recently, HTML hasbeen the dominant technology used in development of Web-based solutions.However, HTML has proven to be inadequate in the following areas:

-   -   Poor performance;    -   Restricted user interface capabilities;    -   Can only produce static Web pages;    -   Lack of interoperability with existing applications and data;        and    -   Inability to scale.

Sun Microsystem's Java language solves many of the client-side problemsby:

-   -   Improving performance on the client side;    -   Enabling the creation of dynamic, real-time Web applications;        and    -   Providing the ability to create a wide variety of user interface        components.

With Java, developers can create robust User Interface (UI) components.Custom “widgets” (e.g., real-time stock tickers, animated icons, etc.)can be created, and client-side performance is improved. Unlike HTML,Java supports the notion of client-side validation, offloadingappropriate processing onto the client for improved performance.Dynamic, real-time Web pages can be created. Using the above-mentionedcustom UI components, dynamic Web pages can also be created.

Sun's Java language has emerged as an industry-recognized language for“programming the Internet.” Sun defines Java as: “a simple,object-oriented, distributed, interpreted, robust, secure,architecture-neutral, portable, high-performance, multithreaded,dynamic, buzzword-compliant, general-purpose programming language. Javasupports programming for the Internet in the form ofplatform-independent Java applets.” Java applets are small, specializedapplications that comply with Sun's Java Application ProgrammingInterface (API) allowing developers to add “interactive content” to Webdocuments (e.g., simple animations, page adornments, basic games, etc.).Applets execute within a Java-compatible browser (e.g., NetscapeNavigator) by copying code from the server to client. From a languagestandpoint, Java's core feature set is based on C++. Sun's Javaliterature states that Java is basically, “C++ with extensions fromObjective C for more dynamic method resolution.”

Another technology that provides similar function to JAVA is provided byMicrosoft and ActiveX Technologies, to give developers and Web designerswherewithal to build dynamic content for the Internet and personalcomputers. ActiveX includes tools for developing animation, 3-D virtualreality, video and other multimedia content. The tools use Internetstandards, work on multiple platforms, and are being supported by over100 companies. The group's building blocks are called ActiveX Controls,small, fast components that enable developers to embed parts of softwarein hypertext markup language (HTML) pages. ActiveX Controls work with avariety of programming languages including Microsoft Visual C++, BorlandDelphi, Microsoft Visual Basic programming system and, in the future,Microsoft's development tool for Java, code named “Jakarta.” ActiveXTechnologies also includes ActiveX Server Framework, allowing developersto create server applications. One of ordinary skill in the art readilyrecognizes that ActiveX could be substituted for JAVA without undueexperimentation to practice the invention.

To improve the decision making process, it may be helpful to deliver theright information to the right person at the right time. For example,the right information may include information from all parts of theorganization and from external sources, information in the context ofthe business process (regardless of the source or format), and relevantinformation about business entities and relationships (rather thankeywords and documents). Delivering the right information to the rightperson may involve filtering of the information based on needs of theindividual, and delivery of the filtered information to the individualor team. The right time may mean providing up-to-date information andinformation on demand. Several challenges exist today that can make itdifficult to meet these requirements. For example, both internal andexternal information may exist in different environments, platforms,formats such as proprietary databases, project reports and e-mailmessages. Additionally, the underlying information repositories due tothe heterogeneous nature, will need to remain unaltered becausescientists and other business process participants store theirinformation in diverse formats and the development of new applicationsusing the repositories will continue, often in isolation. Further,traditional techniques of integration can be very time consuming todevelop and often inflexible to rapid change. For instance, an averagedata-warehousing project typically takes between nine and twelve monthsto complete and most of these projects will typically only integratestructured information. Also, external information can be even a greaterchallenge: there are over one billion web pages (with this numberdoubling every four months) and not all sites are useful or trustworthy.

With embodiments of the present invention, the right information can bedelivered to the right person at the right time. With embodiments of thepresent invention, the information can come from internal and externalsources. The information can also be cleansed, integrated and placed inthe right business context and also be customized to meet anindividual's particular needs. Embodiments of the present invention alsoallow information to be delivered proactively (i.e., “pushed”).

One aspect of the present invention to help facilitate efficientcollaboration by helping to allow the sharing of information with otherteam members and by providing a medium to communicate a set of wellunderstood processes. FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a knowledgebaseframework 200 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.With such a knowledgebase framework, a wide variety of informationsources may be extracted, cleansed and structured based on a knowledgemodel to create a highly customized index that can be accessed andbrowsed by a user.

In closer detail, information may be contained in a plurality ofinternal sources 202 and external sources 204. An internal source 202 ofinformation is typically an information source that is an under thecontrol of entity that employs the user and whose information may beproprietary to the entity. Internal sources of information may include,for example: discovery information, PD information, clinicalinformation, regulatory information, and M&S information. An externalsource 204 of information is typically an information source that is notunder the control of entity that employs the user. An external sourcemay typically be accessible utilizing a wide are network such as theInternet and World Wide Web. External sources may include for example:bio-analysis information, study management information, safety datainformation, market report information, and Internet websites includinggovernment, public, and subscription based websites.

The knowledgebase framework may also include an index creator 206 whichis connected to the internal and external sources 202, 204 by a network.The index creator 206 may also include or have access to a knowledgebasemodel 208. Utilizing the knowledgebase model 208, the index creator 206may extract a wide variety information from the internal and externalsources 202, 204, cleanse the extracted information, restructure theextracted information and then reconcile the extracted information intoa knowledge model-based index.

The knowledgebase framework 200 may also include an index database 210coupled to the index creator 206 for storing the knowledge model-basedindex created by the index creator 206. Users may then access theknowledge model-based index stored in the database 210 from abrowser/portal 212 utilizing the network. As an option, theknowledgebase framework may also include a web server 214 or othersimilar type of computer for interfacing the browser/portal 212 with thedatabase 210.

Additionally, the knowledgebase framework may include a decision supportapplication 216 for helping a user determine what is the rightinformation for the user and help the user receive the right informationat the right time for the user. The decision support application 216 (incombination with the browser/portal 212) provides the user with thecapability to browse and navigate through an integrated web of knowledgeregardless the location of the knowledge sources.

The decision support application 216 also allows the user to accessinternal and external information. The decision support application 216may also be used to provide a user with information tailored for aspecific process such as, for example, a drug discovery. The decisionsupport application 216 may further be used to help deliver the rightinformation to the user by allowing them to monitor internal andexternal events at a wide range of granularity.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of the knowledgebase frameworkillustrating how the index may be used as a user's primary gateway to awide variety of information sources 202, 204 in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention. From this index and with theassistance of the decision support application 216, a user has theability to retrieve the original information source. Some illustrativeinformation sources may include a genomics database 300, a pre-clinicaldatabase 302, a clinical database 304, a departmental reports database306, a subscription based information database 308, and/or market reportdatabase 310. Some of these information sources may comprisesexclusively internal or external sources while other information sourcesmay comprise a combination of internal and external sources. In anillustrative example, as shown in FIG. 3, the departmental reportsdatabase 306 may exclusively comprise internal information sources,while the subscription based information database 308, and market reportdatabase 310 may comprise exclusively external information sources.Continuing with this illustrative example, the genomics database 300,the pre-clinical database 302, and the clinical database 304 may allcomprise a combination of internal and external information sources.FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of an illustrative knowledge model 208 inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention. The knowledgemodel comprises a plurality of inter-related items. In an illustrativeembodiment of the present invention, as illustrated in FIG. 4, the itemsof the knowledge model may include: a therapeutic area item 400, atarget item 402, disease item 404, a scientist item 406, an organizationitem 408, a patent item 410, a compound item 412, a literature item 414,a FDA approval item 416, and a drug item 418.

The inter-relations between the various items of the knowledge model areillustrated in FIG. 4 by the plurality of connecting lines (e.g.,connecting line 420)connecting each of the items to various other items.For example, the literature item 414 is directly related with the targetitem 402, the scientist item 406, the organization item 408, thecompound item 412, and drug item 418. Also shown in FIG. 4 are themanner or type of relationship 422 provided by the associated connectingline. For example, the relationship between the literature item and thescientist item is the term “Authored.”

The knowledge model also helps to provide an organizational structure tothe index generated in the knowledgebase framework so that the items ofthe generated index are arranged according to the organizationstructure. In one embodiment of the present invention, theorganizational structure of the generated index may be based on theinter-relations between the items of the knowledge model.

FIG. 5 illustrates a flowchart for a process 500 for a knowledgebaseframework in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.Information is obtained from at least one knowledge source utilizing anetwork in operation 502. Utilizing a knowledge model, an index isgenerated for the obtained information in operation 504. This generatedindex includes a plurality of items (or entries) each associated with atleast some of the obtained information. The generated index may then bestored in an index database. Utilizing the network, the generated indexis displayed to a user in operation 506. The user is permitted to selectan least one of the items of the index in operation 508. After receiptof the selection by the user, the information associated with theselected item is then displayed to the user utilizing the network inoperation 510.

In an aspect of the present invention, one of the knowledge sources fromwhich information is obtained may be an internal source under thecontrol of entity that employs the user and whose information thereinmay be proprietary to the entity. Some illustrative examples of internalsources include: a genomics database, a pre-clinical database, aclinical database, and/or a departmental reports database.

In another aspect of the present invention, one of the knowledge sourcesfrom which information is obtained may be an external source (e.g., awebsite) accessible utilizing a wide are network such as the Internetand World Wide Web. In general, the external sources may not typicallybe under the control of entity that employs the user. Some illustrativeexamples of external sources include subscription based information,and/or market reports.

In a further aspect of the present invention, the information obtainedfrom the sources may include pharmaceutical information such as, forexample, information relating to: a pharmaceutical therapeutic area, apharmaceutical target, a pharmaceutical compound, a disease, a patent,the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) (such as information regarding FDAapproval of a pharmaceutical), a person researching or working on apharmaceutical, and/or pharmaceutical literature such as a periodical.

In an embodiment of the present invention, the network may be utilizedto monitor one or more of the knowledge sources for updated informationrelating to one or more items in the index. In such an embodiment, whenupdated information is detected at one of the knowledge sources, anotice may be generated regarding the updated information. This noticemay then be transmitted to the user utilizing the network to notify theuser of the updated information. As an option, the user may be allowedto select the knowledge source(s) to be monitored for updates or otherchanges.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the user may bepermitted to input a search term for searching the index utilizing thenetwork. Upon receipt of the search term, the index may be searched foritems associated with the search term. Items of the index associatedwith the input search term (i.e., that match the search term) may thenbe displayed to the user utilizing the network.

In one aspect of the present invention, the items of the index may beorganized and displayed in some sort of a hierarchical format such as,for example, a hierarchical tree format. In yet a further aspect of thepresent invention, displaying of the information associated with theselected item (or entry) to the user may also include utilizing thenetwork to retrieve the associated information from the knowledgebasesource (such as a website) from which the associated information wasobtained. In even another aspect of the present invention, the networkmay be capable of communicating using TCP/IP protocol.

FIG. 6 illustrates a flowchart for a process 600 for a knowledge modelin accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. A network isutilized to access or one or more knowledge sources in operation 602.Information from the knowledge source is then extracted utilizing thenetwork in operation 604. The extracted information may have its ownformatting. The format of the extracted information is converted inoperation 606 into a common or standardized format (i.e., cleansing andrestructuring). An index is generated for the standardized extractedinformation utilizing a knowledge model in operation 608. The generatedindex is then stored in an index database in operation 610.

In one aspect of the present invention, the knowledge model may includea plurality of inter-associated or inter-related items. In such anaspect, generation of the index may include associating the extractedinformation with one or more of the items of the model, and then mappingthe extracted information to the associated item. In this manner, whenthe index is displayed to a user, selection of the item by a user linksthe user to the associated information and the source of theinformation. As an option, the items of the knowledge model may includea therapeutic area item, a target item, disease item, a scientist item,an organization item, a patent item, a compound item, a literature item,a FDA approval item, and/or a drug item.

In even another aspect of the present invention, the knowledge model mayalso provide an organizational structure to the generated index so thatthe items of the generated index are arranged according to theorganization structure. As an illustrative example, the organizationalstructure may be a hierarchical tree of the items. In a further aspectof the present invention, the extracted information may includepharmaceutical information. In another aspect of the present invention,the knowledge sources may include one or more an internal knowledgesources, and/or an external knowledge sources. In yet still anotheraspect of the present invention, the network may be capable ofcommunicating using TCP/IP protocol.

In an embodiment of the present invention, a user may be permitted toaccess the database utilizing the network to retrieve the stored index.In another embodiment of the present invention, a query may be receivedutilizing the network whereupon, the index may be searched forinformation matching the query to thereby permit retrieval of thematching information utilizing the network.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the knowledgebase framework200 may be used to help a user learn about a field and/or catch up onnew developments in this field. In an embodiment of the presentinvention, a user may be able to use the knowledgebase framework 200 tofind people who are involved in the area being studied and theirbackground, previous research work done in the area (which in anillustrative embodiment may include a list of targets, compounds anddrugs), and obtain research reports relating to the area being studied.Also, the user may utilize the knowledgebase framework 200 to findinformation from external sources such as, for example: recent patents,targets, compounds, and drugs relating to the area being studied, aswell the people (such as scientists) who are actively working in thisfield or area of study.

FIG. 7 is a schematic illustration of a log in frame 700 for permittinga user to log into the knowledgebase framework utilizing a network inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention. In one aspect ofthe present invention, the log in frame 700 may include a user namefield 702 for permitting a user to enter a user name associatedtherewith, a password field 704 for permitting the user to enter apassword associated with the user and the user name, and a selectablelog in button 706 for permitting the user to log into the knowledgebaseframework upon selection thereof.

Upon logging in, the user has access to the knowledgebase frameworkutilizing the decision support application 216 to obtain information inthe area of their study. FIG. 8 is a schematic illustration of a searchand browse frame 800 of the decision support application for permittinga user browse the knowledge model-based index in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention. Displayed in the search and browseframe 800 is a portion of the items of an illustrative knowledgemodel-based index. In this illustrative example, the items of the indexbeing displayed comprises the therapeutic area items 802 of theillustrative index including, for example, a cardiology/vasculardiseases 804 therapeutic area item. The items of the index displayed inthe search and browse frame 800 also comprise selectable links whichupon selection thereof by the user leads to the retrieval from the indexdatabase 210 and the displaying in the search and browse frame 800 ofitems of the knowledge model-based index related to the selection item.

FIG. 9 is a schematic illustration of the items of the knowledgemodel-base index displayed in the search and browse frame 800 uponselection of the cardiology/vascular diseases item 804 in FIG. 8 inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention. These items alsocomprise selectable links so that selection of one of them leads to theretrieving and display of other items of the index related to theselected item. Included in FIG. 9, are disease items 900 and biologicaltarget items 902 of the illustrative index related to the selectedtherapeutic target item 804. In an illustrative example, one of thebiological target items of the index being displayed in FIG. 9 mayinclude an ACE biological target item 904.

FIG. 10 is a schematic illustration of the items of the knowledgemodel-base index displayed in the search and browse frame 800 uponselection of the ACE biological target item 904 in FIG. 9 in accordancewith an embodiment of the present invention. These items also compriseselectable links so that selection of one of them leads to theretrieving and display of other items of the index related to theselected item. Included in FIG. 10, are component items 1002 of theillustrative index related to the selected item. In an illustrativeexample, one of the compound items of the index being displayed in FIG.10 may include a captopril compound item 1004.

As illustrated in FIG. 10, in one aspect of the present invention, thesearch and browse frame 800 may include a display bar 1006 in which thehierarchy 1008 in the index of the selected item may be displayed. Forexample, in FIG. 10, the displayed hierarchy 1008 may comprises thetarget name ACE, and the therapeutic area cardiology/vascular.

FIG. 11 is a schematic illustration of illustrative items of theknowledge model-base index displayed in the search and browse frame 800upon selection of the captopril compound item 1004 in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention. These items also compriseselectable links so that selection of one of them leads to theretrieving of information from the knowledgebase framework 200 and/orother items of the index related to the selected item. Included in FIG.11, are illustrative items of the illustrative index related to theselected item (in this case captopril). In this illustrative example,the displayed related items include: related drug items 1100, relatedpatent items 1102, related scientists and/or people items 1104, relatedliterature items 1106, and related disease items 1108.

In one embodiment of the present invention, one of the items may beselected (such as by clicking the right button of a mouse when the mousepointer is over the item, i.e., “right clicking”) to display a pop-upmenu 1110 which includes a monitor selection 1112 and a visit sourceselection 1114.

FIG. 12 is a schematic illustration of a browser frame 1200 whichdisplays information 1202 from knowledge source relating to an item (inthis example the captopril drug item 1004) upon selection of the visitsource selection 1114 of FIG. 11 in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention. In the illustrative example illustrated in FIG. 12,the information 1202 displayed in the browser frame 1200 relates to thedrug captopril and is obtained from an external source, in this case anillustrative website 1204 on the Internet

FIG. 13 is a schematic illustration of an exemplary display of thedisplay bar 1006 upon selection of a scientist/person item 1104 inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention. When a userselects a scientist/person item 1104, the knowledgebase framework mayretrieve contact information for the scientist/person from a knowledgesource and then display the retrieved contact information 1300 in thedisplay bar 1006.

FIG. 14 is a schematic illustration of illustrative items of theknowledge model-base index displayed in the search and browse frame 800upon selection of the patent item 1116 of FIG. 11 in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention. In an illustrative embodiment, thedisplayed items related to the selected patent item 1116 may includeitems for patent cited 1400 in the selected patent 1116, items fororganizations 1402 related to the selected patent, items for FDAapproval matters 1404 related to the selected patent, items forscientists and/or people 1406 associated with the selected patent, anditems for compounds 1004 related to the selected patent.

FIG. 15 is a schematic illustration of a browser frame 1500 whichdisplays information 1502 from knowledge source relating to the selectedpatent item of FIG. 14 upon selection of the visit source selection 1114of FIG. 14 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Inthe illustrative example illustrated in FIG. 15, the information 1502displayed in the browser frame 1500 relates to U.S. Pat. No. 5,238,924and is obtained from an external source, in this case, the USPTOwebsite's Patent Full Text and Image Database.

Utilizing the knowledgebase framework, a user may be able to monitorwork done by others, such as scientists researching a particular area orfield. This may be accomplished by selecting the monitor selection 1110of a selected item, such as for example a scientist item 1118 displayedthe search and browse frame of FIG. 11. In an embodiment of the presentinvention, any of the items of the index can be monitored for changesand updates to related information. For example, a user can select formonitoring an organization for any new publications, patents, drugapplications, and recent news associated with the organization. Inanother illustrative example, a target item may be monitored for any newinformation related to monitored target.

In one embodiment of the present invention, when the user logs into thedecision support application 216, the user may see the most recent newsabout the scientists. FIG. 16 illustrates a recent news frame 1600 thatthe user may access after logging on to the network in accordance withan embodiment of the present invention. In one aspect of the presentinvention, a portion of the recent news frame 1600 may comprise a recentnews portion 1602 and a monitored items portion 1604. In such an aspect,links 1606, 1608 to recently updated information may be displayed. In anillustrative example, selection of link 1606 (which is a link to apatent) may result in the retrieval and displaying of a browser framesimilar to the browser frame of FIG. 15 to display information relatingto the selected patent obtained from the USPTO website's Patent FullText and Image Database.

With continuing reference to FIG. 16, the links may also comprisehypertext links and include textual summaries relating to informationthat was recently updated (see e.g., link 1608). As an option, theselinks may be organized by subjects or items such as for example, theitems of the knowledge model 208 and displayed in correspondingsubheadings. As illustrated in FIG. 16, some illustrative subheadingsmay include an organizations subheading 1610, a targets subheading 1612,and a scientist subheading 1614.

The monitored items portion 1604 may display a list of items 1616selected by the user to be monitored by the knowledgebase framework.Like the recent news links 1606, the items 1616 in the monitored itemsportion 1604 may comprise links to access items in the knowledgemodel-based index.

With continuing reference to FIG. 16, a search bar 1618 may also bedisplayed to the user. The search bar 1618 may include at least onefield 1620 for the user to input a search term. Upon input, a search maybe conducted by a search engine for items in the index related to theinputted term(s). Figure A

FIG. 17 illustrates a flowchart for a process 1700 for monitoringinformation in a knowledgebase framework in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention. Utilizing a network, information isreceived from a user that relates to a target to be tracked in operation1702. The network is monitored for changes or updates to the target1704. When a change is monitored, data relating to the monitored changesis retrieved in operation 1706 and then transmitted to the userutilizing the network in operation 1708.

In one aspect of the present invention, the target may be an item ofindex displayed to the user utilizing the network. In another aspect ofthe present invention, the target may be: a publication (e.g.,literature), a person (e.g., scientist),a therapeutic area, a disease, abiological target, an organization, a compound, a patent, FDA approval,and/or a drug.

In a further aspect of the present invention, a pharmaceutical databasemay be monitored for changes or updates relating to the target. In yetanother aspect of the present invention, the network may comprise anintranet of an organization and the Internet.

In an embodiment of the present invention, the received information maybe stored in memory. In another embodiment of the present invention, theretrieved data may be transmitted to the user after receipt of anindication that the user has logged on to the network. As an option tosuch an embodiment, the retrieved data may be automatically transmittedto the user after receipt of the indication that the user has logged onto the network.

In a further embodiment of the present invention, the user may bealerted that a change or update to the target has been monitoredutilizing the network. In even another embodiment of the presentinvention, the user may be permitted to input a search term utilizingthe network. In such an embodiment, items associated with the searchterm may be searched for upon receipt of the search term. Then thoseitems which have been found to be associated with the inputted searchterm may be displayed to the user utilizing the network.

FIG. 18A is a schematic illustration of a process map 1800 displayed ina research frame 1802 for use in a knowledgebase framework in accordancewith an embodiment of the present invention. With the research frame1802, a user may be able to share a set of common processes and reporttemplates with one or more other users to document their findings forfurther collaboration. The process map graphically depicts a timelinefor one or more processes. In the illustrative example illustrated inFIG. 18A, the depicted process map 1800 may be for process for thedevelopment of a product 1804 in a pharmaceutical setting.

The research frame 1802 may also include selectable links for accessingvarious tools for the research frame such as for example, templates 1806and target tracking tools 1808. FIG. 18B is a schematic illustration ofan illustrative template 1810 for a process map displayed in theresearch frame 1802 in accordance with an embodiment of the presentinvention.

FIG. 18C illustrates an inbox 1812 for managing email messages displayedin an organizer frame 1814 for use in a knowledgebase framework inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention. The organizerframe may also include a plurality of tool links for accessing featuresof the organizer frame. Illustrative examples of tool links include amail link 1816 for displaying the inbox upon selection thereof and acalendar link 1818. Also illustrated in FIG. 18C is a pull-down menu1820 that may be included in the search bar 1618 to further narrow asearch of terms input into the search bar.

FIG. 18D illustrates a calendar 1822 for managing events andappointments of a user displayed in an organizer frame 1814 for use in aknowledgebase framework in accordance with an embodiment of the presentinvention. The calendar 1822 may be displayed upon selection of thecalendar link 1818 by a user.

The following example describes an illustrative scenario for utilizingthe knowledgebase framework in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention.

EXAMPLE

Anne Kline, a senior biologist at Acme Pharmaceutical, has justtransferred from the Oncology department to the Cardiovasculardepartment. She has a reasonably strong background in Cardiovascular.Prior to joining Acme Pharmaceutical, she worked at the Imperial CollegeSchool of Medicine's Cardiovascular department for a couple years.However, she has not been active in this area since she joined AcmePharmaceutical 3 years ago. She needs to catch up with the newdevelopments in this area—inside and outside Acme Pharmaceutical. AcmePharmaceutical has just installed a knowledgebase framework. Theknowledgebase framework allows Acme Pharmaceutical's scientists tosearch, browse and monitor internal and external information availableto them. Anne accesses the knowledgebase framework from her computerdesktop.

Anne accesses the knowledgebase framework from her computer desktop. Shespends almost the entire day using the knowledgebase framework and atthe end of the day she is able to find:

-   -   The people in Acme Pharmaceutical who are involved in the        cardiovascular area and their background    -   Previous research work done within Acme Pharmaceutical (which        includes a list of targets, compounds and drugs)    -   Internal research reports

In addition, Anne also finds useful information from external sourcessuch as recent:

-   -   Patents    -   Targets    -   Compounds    -   Drugs    -   as well the scientists who are actively working in this area

In addition, Anne finds two scientists whose work seem to be relevant toher first assignment. She sets up her profile in the knowledgebaseframework in such a way that it will monitor any future work done bythese scientists. The next time Anne accesses the knowledgebaseframework, she will see the most recent news about those two scientists.She also knows that Merck has been very active in the Cardiovasculararea. She sets up the knowledgebase framework to monitor any newpublications, patents, drug applications by Merck The next time Anneaccesses the knowledgebase framework, she will see the most recent newsabout Merck.

Anne's first assignment is to investigate TR27 K-Channel as a potentialtarget for hypertension treatment. She uses the knowledgebase frameworkto find out any previous work related TR27. She finds only one articlethat are somewhat relevant. Since she will be working on this target forawhile, she sets up the knowledgebase framework to monitor any newinformation related to TR27. One morning a couple days later, Anne turnson her computer and the knowledgebase framework informs her that Pfizerhas filed a patent and this patent has cited TR27. Anne quickly browsesthrough the patent. Luckily, the patent cited TR27 for a differentreason.

Later on that day, the knowledgebase framework informs her that there isa newly released internal report that mentioned this particular target.This report was filed by the Neurology department, right after the HighThroughput Screening was conducted on the target. She downloads thereport and studies it carefully.

She launches Target DB, a tool that stores information of all targetsinvestigated by Acme Pharmaceutical, from the knowledgebase framework tofind out the details information about assay used for TR27. With helpfrom the knowledgebase framework, Anne figures out the person involvedwith this target. She is able to contact one of that researcher forfurther information.

While her testing procedures will be different, Anne is able to use manyparts of the results as a starting point. This encounter has saved her afew months of hard work. The two researchers are able to share a set ofcommon processes and report templates to document their findings forfurther collaboration.

FIG. 19 is a schematic diagram of an exemplary system architecture inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

In accordance with an embodiment of the present invention, aBackgroundFinder (BF) is implemented as an agent responsible forpreparing an individual for an upcoming meeting by helping him/herretrieve relevant information about the meeting from various sources. BFreceives input text in character form indicative of the target meeting.The input text is generated in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention by a calendar program that includes the time of themeeting. As the time of the meeting approaches, the calendar program isqueried to obtain the text of the target event and that information isutilized as input to the agent. Then, the agent parses the input meetingtext to extract its various components such as title, body,participants, location, time etc. The system also performs patternmatching to identify particular meeting fields in a meeting text. Thisinformation is utilized to query various sources of information on theweb and obtain relevant stories about the current meeting to send backto the calendaring system. For example, if an individual has a meetingwith Netscape and Microsoft to talk about their disputes, and wouldobtain this initial information from the calendaring system. It willthen parse out the text to realize that the companies in the meeting are“Netscape” and “Microsoft” and the topic is “disputes.” Then, the systemqueries the web for relevant information concerning the topic. Thus, inaccordance with an objective of the invention, the system updates thecalendaring system and eventually the user with the best information itcan gather to prepare the user for the target meeting. In accordancewith an embodiment of the present invention, the information is storedin a file that is obtained via selection from a link imbedded in thecalendar system.

Program Organization:

A computer program in accordance with an embodiment of the presentinvention is organized in five distinct modules: BF.Main, BF.Parse,Background Finder.Error, BF.PatternMatching and BF.Search. There is alsoa frmMain which provides a user interface used only for debuggingpurposes. The executable programs in accordance with an embodiment ofthe present invention never execute with the user interface and shouldonly return to the calendaring system through Microsoft's Winsockcontrol. An embodiment of the system executes in two different modeswhich can be specified under the command line sent to it by thecalendaring system. When the system runs in simple mode, it executes akeyword query to submit to external search engines. When executed incomplex mode, the system performs pattern matching before it forms aquery to be sent to a search engine.

Data Structures:

The system in accordance with an embodiment of the present inventionutilizes three user defined structures:

-   -   TMeetingRecord;    -   TPatternElement; and    -   TPatternRecord.

The user-defined structure, tMeetingRecord, is used to store all thepertinent information concerning a single meeting. This info includesuserID, an original description of the meeting, the extracted list ofkeywords from the title and body of meeting etc. It is important to notethat only one meeting record is created per instance of the system inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention. This is becauseeach time the system is spawned to service an upcoming meeting, it isassigned a task to retrieve information for only one meeting. Therefore,the meeting record created corresponds to the current meeting examined.

ParseMeetingText populates this meeting record and it is then passedaround to provide information about the meeting to other functions.

If GoPatternMatch can bind any values to a particular meeting field, thecorresponding entries in the meeting record is also updated. Thestructure of tMeetingRecord with each field described in parentheses isprovided below in accordance with an embodiment of the presentinvention. Public Type tMeetingRecord  sUserID As String (user id givenby Munin)  sTitleOrig As String (original non stop listed title we needto  keep around to send back to Munin)  sTitleKW As String (stoplistedtitle with only keywords)  sBodyKW As String (stoplisted body with onlykeywords)  sCompany( ) As String (companies identified in title or body through pattern matching)  sTopic( ) As String (topics identified intitle or body through  pattern matching)  sPeople( ) As String (peopleidentified in title or body through  pattern matching)  sWhen( ) AsString (time identified in title or body through  pattern matching) sWhere( ) As String (location identified in title or body through pattern matching)  sLocation As String (location as passed in by Munin) sTime As String (time as passed in by Munin)  sParticipants( ) AsString  (all participants engaged as passed in by  Munin)  sMeetingTextAs String  (the original meeting text w/o userid) End Type

There are two other structures which are created to hold each individualpattern utilized in pattern matching. The record tAPatternRecord is anarray containing all the components/elements of a pattern. The typetAPatternElement is an array of strings which represent an element in apattern. Because there may be many “substitutes” for each element, weneed an array of strings to keep track of what all the substitutes are.The structures of tAPatternElement and tAPatternRecord are presentedbelow in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

Public Type tAPatternElement

-   -   elementArray( ) As String

End Type

Public Type tAPatternRecord

-   -   patternArray( ) As tAPatternElement

End Type

User Defined Constants:

Many constants are defined in each declaration section of the programwhich may need to be updated periodically as part of the process ofmaintaining the system in accordance with an embodiment of the presentinvention. The constants are accessible to allow dynamic configurationof the system to occur as updates for maintaining the code.

Included in the following tables are lists of constants from each modulewhich I thought are most likely to be modified from time to time.However, there are also other constants used in the code not included inthe following list. It does not mean that these non-included constantswill never be changed. It means that they will change much lessfrequently.

For the Main Module (BF.Main): CONSTANT PRESET VALUE USE MSGTOMUNIN_TYPE6 Define the message number used t

identify messages between BF and Munin IP_ADDRESS_MUNIN “10.2.100.48”Define the IP address of the machi

in which Munin and BF are runnin

on so they can transfer data throug

UDP. PORT_MUNIN 7777 Define the remote port in which we are operatingon. TIMEOUT_AV 60 Define constants for setting time o

in inet controls TIMEOUT_NP 60 Define constants for setting time o

in inet controls CMD_SEPARATOR “\” Define delimiter to tell which part

Munin's command represents the beginning of our input meeting tex

OUTPARAM_SEPARATO

“::” Define delimiter for separating ou

different portions of the output. T

separator is for delimiting the msg type, the user id, the meeting titlea

the beginning of the actual stories retrieved.

For the Search Module (BF.Search): CONSTANT CURRENT VALU

USE PAST_NDAYS 5 Define number of days you want t

look back for AltaVista articles. Doesn't really matter now because

aren't really doing a news search i

alta vista. We want all info. CONNECTOR_AV_URL “+AND+” Define how toconnect keywords.

want all our keywords in the string

for now use AND. If you want to do an OR or something, ju

change connector. CONNECTOR_NP_URL “+AND+” Define how to connectkeywords.

want all our keywords in the string

for now use AND. If you want to do an OR or something, ju

change connector. NUM_NP_STORIES 3 Define the number of stories to retu

back to Munin from NewsPage. NUM_AV_STORIES 3 Define the number ofstories to retu

back to Munin from AltaVista.

For the Parse Module (BF.Parse): CONSTANT CURRENT VALU

USE PORTION_SEPARATOR “::” Define the separator between differ

portions of the meeting text sent in

Munin. For example in “09::Meet w

Chad::about life::Chad|Denise::::: “::” is the separator between differe

parts of the meeting text. PARTICIPANT_SEPARATOR “|” Define theseparator between each participant in the participant list portion ofthe original meeting tex

Refer to example above.

For Pattern Matching Module (BFPatternMatch): There are no constants inthis module which require frequent updates.

General Process Flow:

The best way to depict the process flow and the coordination offunctions between each other is with the five flowcharts illustrated inFIGS. 20 to 24. FIG. 20 depicts the overall process flow in accordancewith an embodiment of the present invention. Processing commences at thetop of the chart at function block 2000 which launches when the programstarts. Once the application is started, the command line is parsed toremove the appropriate meeting text to initiate the target of thebackground find operation in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention as shown in function block 2010. A global stop list isgenerated after the target is determined as shown in function block2020. Then, all the patterns that are utilized for matching operationsare generated as illustrated in function block 2030. Then, by tracingthrough the chart, function block 2000 invokes GoBF 2040 which isresponsible for logical processing associated with wrapping the correctsearch query information for the particular target search engine. Forexample, function block 2040 flows to function block 2050 and it thencalls GoPatternMatch as shown in function block 2060. To see the processflow of GoPatternMatch, we swap to the diagram titled “Process Flow forBF's Pattern Matching Unit.”

One key thing to notice is that functions depicted at the same level ofthe chart are called by in sequential order from left to right (or topto bottom) by their common parent function. For example, Main 2000 callsProcessCommandLine 2010, then CreateStopListist 2020, thenCreatePatterns 2030, then GoBackgroundFinder 2040. FIGS. 21 to 24 detailthe logic for the entire program, the parsing unit, the pattern matchingunit and the search unit respectively. FIG. 24 details the logicdeterminative of data flow of key information through BackgroundFinder,and shows the functions that are responsible for creating or processingsuch information.

DETAILED SEARCH ARCHITECTURE UNDER THE BASIC SEARCH/SIMPLE QUERY MODE

Search ALTA VISTA (Function Block 2070 of FIG. 20):

The Alta Vista search engine utilizes the identifies and returns generalinformation about topics related to the current meeting as shown infunction block 270 of FIG. 2. The system in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention takes all the keywords from thetitle portion of the original meeting text and constructs an advancedquery to send to Alta Vista. The keywords are logically combinedtogether in the query. The results are also ranked based on the same setof keywords. One of ordinary skill in the art will readily comprehendthat a date restriction or publisher criteria could be facilitated onthe articles we want to retrieve. A set of top ranking stories arereturned to the calendaring system in accordance with an embodiment ofthe present invention.

NewsPage (Function Block 2075 of FIG. 20):

The NewsPage search system is responsible for giving us the latest newstopics related to a target meeting. The system takes all of the keywordsfrom the title portion of the original meeting text and constructs aquery to send to the NewsPage search engine. The keywords are logicallycombined together in the query. Only articles published recently areretrieved. The NewsPage search system provides a date restrictioncriteria that is settable by a user according to the user's preference.The top ranking stories are returned to the calendaring system.

FIG. 21 is a user profile data model in accordance with an embodiment ofthe present invention. Processing commences at function block 2100 whichis responsible for invoking the program from the main module. Then, atfunction block 2110, a wrapper function is invoked to prepare for thekeyword extraction processing in function block 2120. After the keywordsare extracted, then processing flows to function block 2130 to determineif the delimiters are properly positioned. Then, at function block 2140,the number of words in a particular string is calculated and thedelimiters for the particular field are and a particular field from themeeting text is retrieved at function block 2150. Then, at functionblock 2180, the delimiters of the string are again checked to assurethey are placed appropriately. Finally, at function block 2160, theextraction of each word from the title and body of the message isperformed a word at a time utilizing the logic in function block 2162which finds the next closest word delimiter in the input phrase,function block 2164 which strips unnecessary materials from a word andfunction block 2166 which determines if a word is on the stop list andreturns an error if the word is on the stop list.

Pattern Matching:

Limitations associated with a simple searching method include:

-   -   1. Because it relies on a stop list of unwanted words in order        to extract from the meeting text a set of keywords, it is        limited by how comprehensive the stop list is. Instead of trying        to figure out what parts of the meeting text we should throw        away, we should focus on what parts of the meeting text we want.    -   2. A simple search method in accordance with an embodiment of        the present invention only uses the keywords from a meeting        title to form queries to send to Alta Vista and NewsPage. This        ignores an alternative source of information for the query, the        body of the meeting notice. We cannot include the keywords from        the meeting body to form our queries because this often results        in queries which are too long and so complex that we often        obtain no meaningful results.    -   3. There is no way for us to tell what each keyword represents.        For example, we may extract “Andy” and “Grove” as two keywords.        However, a simplistic search has no way knowing that “Andy        Grove” is in fact a person's name. Imagine the possibilities if        we could somehow intelligently guess that “Andy Grove” is a        person's name. We can find out if he is an Andersen person and        if so what kind of projects he's been on before etc. etc.    -   4. In summary, by relying solely on a stop list to parse out        unnecessary words, we suffer from “information overload”.

Pattern Matching Overcomes These Limitations:

Here's how the pattern matching system can address each of thecorresponding issues above in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention.

-   -   1. By doing pattern matching, we match up only parts of the        meeting text that we want and extract those parts.    -   2. By performing pattern matching on the meeting body and        extracting only the parts from the meeting body that we want.        Our meeting body will not go to complete waste then.    -   3. Pattern matching is based on a set of templates that we        specify, allowing us to identify people names, company names etc        from a meeting text.    -   4. In summary, with pattern matching, we no longer suffer from        information overload. Of course, the big problem is how well our        pattern matching works. If we rely exclusively on artificial        intelligence processing, we do not have a 100% hit rate. We are        able to identify about 20% of all company names presented to us.

Patterns:

A pattern in the context of an embodiment of the present invention is atemplate specifying the structure of a phrase we are looking for in ameeting text. The patterns supported by an embodiment of the presentinvention are selected because they are templates of phrases which havea high probability of appearing in someone's meeting text. For example,when entering a meeting in a calendar, many would write something suchas “Meet with Bob Dutton from Stanford University next Tuesday.” Acommon pattern would then be something like the word “with” followed bya person's name (in this example it is Bob Dutton) followed by the word“from” and ending with an organization's name (in this case, it isStanford University).

Pattern Matching Terminology:

Terminology associated with pattern matching includes:

-   -   Pattern: a pattern is a template specifying the structure of a        phrase we want to bind the meeting text to. It contains sub        units.    -   Element: a pattern can contain many sub-units. These subunits        are called elements. For example, in the pattern “with $PEOPLE$        from $COMPANY$”, “with” “$PEOPLE$” “from” “$COMPANY$” are all        elements.    -   Placeholder: a placeholder is a special kind of element in which        we want to bind a value to. Using the above example, “$PEOPLE$”        is a placeholder.    -   Indicator: an indicator is another kind of element which we want        to find in a meeting text but no value needs to bind to it.        There may be often more than one indicator we are looking for in        a certain pattern. That is why an indicator is not an “atomic”        type.    -   Substitute: substitutes are a set of indicators which are all        synonyms of each other. Finding any one of them in the input is        good.

There may be five fields which are identified for each meeting:

-   -   Company ($COMPANY$)    -   People ($PEOPLE$)    -   Location ($LOCATION$)    -   Time ($TIME$)    -   Topic ($TOPIC_UPPER$) or ($TOPIC_ALL$)

In parentheses are the illustrative placeholders used in the code asrepresentation of the corresponding meeting fields.

Each placeholder may have the following meaning:

-   -   $COMPANY$: binds a string of capitalized words (e.g., Meet with        Joe Carter of <Andersen Consulting>)    -   $PEOPLE$: binds series of string of two capitalized words        potentially connected by “,” “and” or “&” (e.g., Meet with <Joe        Carter> of Andersen Consulting, Meet with <Joe Carter and Luke        Hughes> of Andersen Consulting)    -   $LOCATION$: binds a string of capitalized words (e.g., Meet        Susan at <Palo Alto Square>)    -   $TIME$: binds a string containing the format #:## (e.g., Dinner        at <6:30 pm>)    -   $TOPIC_UPPER$: binds a string of capitalized words for our topic        (e.g., <Stanford Engineering Recruiting> Meeting to talk about        new hires).    -   $TOPIC_ALL$: binds a string of words without really caring if        it's capitalized or not. (e.g., Meet to talk about <ubiquitous        computing>)

The following table represents patterns supported by BF. Each patternbelongs to a pattern group. All patterns within a pattern group share asimilar format and they only differ from each other in terms of whatindicators are used as substitutes. Note that the patterns which aregrayed out are also commented in the code. BF has the capability tosupport these patterns but we decided that matching these patterns isnot essential at this point. 1 1.1.1.1.1.1 $PEOPLE$ of Paul Maritz ofMicrosoft $COMPANY$ b $PEOPLE$ from Bill Gates, Paul Allen and $COMPANY$Paul Maritz from Microsoft 2 a $TOPIC_UPPER$ meeting Push TechnologyMeeting b $TOPIC_UPPER$ mtg Push Technology Mtg c $TOPIC_UPPER$ demoPush Technology demo d $TOPIC_UPPER$ Push Technology interview interviewe $TOPIC_UPPER$ Push Technology presentation presentation f$TOPIC_UPPER$ visit Push Technology visit g $TOPIC_UPPER$ briefing PushTechnology briefing h $TOPIC_UPPER$ Push Technology discussiondiscussion i $TOPIC_UPPER$ Push Technology workshop workshop j$TOPIC_UPPER$ prep Push Technology prep k $TOPIC_UPPER$ review PushTechnology review l $TOPIC_UPPER$ lunch Push Technology lunch m$TOPIC_UPPER$ project Push Technology project n $TOPIC_UPPER$ projectsPush Technology projects 3 a $COMPANY$ corporation Intel Corporation b$COMPANY$ corp. IBM Corp. c $COMPANY$ systems Cisco Systems d $COMPANY$limited IBM limited e $COMPANY$ ltd IBM ltd 4 a about $TOPIC_ALL$ Aboutintelligent agents technology b discuss $TOPIC_ALL$ Discuss intelligentagents technology c show $TOPIC_ALL$ Show the client our intelligentagents technology d re: $TOPIC_ALL$ re: intelligent agents technology ereview $TOPIC_ALL$ Review intelligent agents technology f agenda Theagenda is as follows: clean up clean up clean up g agenda: $TOPJC_ALL$Agenda: demo client intelligent agents technology. demo ecommerce. 5 aw/$PEOPLE$ of Meet w/Joe Carter of $COMPANY$ Andersen Consulting bw/$PEOPLE$ from Meet w/Joe Carter from $COMPANY$ Andersen Consulting 6 aw/$COMPANY$ per Talk w/Intel per Jason $PEOPLE$ Foster

8 a At $LOCATION$ At LuLu's resturant b In $LOCATION$ in Santa Clara 9 aPer $PEOPLE$ per Susan Butler 10 a call w/$PEOPLE$ Conf call w/JohnSmith B call with $PEOPLE$ Conf call with John Smith 11 A prep for$TOPIC_ALL$ Prep for London meeting B preparation for Preparation forLondon $TOPIC_ALL$ meeting

FIG. 22 is a detailed flowchart of pattern matching in accordance withan embodiment of the present invention. Processing commences at functionblock 2200 where the main program invokes the pattern matchingapplication and passes control to function block 2210 to commence thepattern match processing. Then, at function block 2220, the wrapperfunction loops through to process each pattern which includesdetermining if a part of the text string can be bound to a pattern asshown in function block 2230. Then, at function block 2240, variousplaceholders are bound to values if they exist, and in function block2241, a list of names separated by punctuation are bound, and atfunction block 2242 a full name is processed by finding two capitalizedwords as a full name and grabbing the next letter after a space after aword to determine if it is capitalized. Then, at function block 2243,time is parsed out of the string in an appropriate manner and the nextword after a blank space in function block 2244. Then, at function block2245, the continuous phrases of capitalized words such as company, topicor location are bound and in function block 2246, the next word afterthe blank is obtained for further processing in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention. Following the match meeting fieldprocessing, function block 2250 is utilized to locate an indicator whichis the head of a pattern, the next word after the blank is obtained asshown in function block 2252 and the word is checked to determine if theword is an indicator as shown in function block 2254. Then, at functionblock 2260, the string is parsed to locate an indicator which is not atthe end of the pattern and the next word after unnecessary white spacesuch as that following a line feed or a carriage return is processed asshown in function block 2262 and the word is analyzed to determine if itis an indicator as shown in function block 2264. Then, in function block2270, the temporary record is reset to the null set to prepare it forprocessing the next string and at function block 2280, the meetingrecord is updated and at function block 2282 a check is performed todetermine if an entry is already made to the meeting record beforeparsing the meeting record again.

Using the Identified Meeting Fields:

Now that we have identified fields within the meeting text which weconsider important, there are quite a few things we can do with it. Oneof the most important applications of pattern matching is of course toimprove the query we construct which eventually gets submitted to AltaVista and News Page. There are also a lot of other options andenhancements which exploit the results of pattern matching that we canadd to BF. These other options will be described in the next section.The goal of this section is to give the reader a good sense of how theresults obtained from pattern matching can be used to help us obtainbetter search results.

FIG. 23 shows a flowchart of the detailed processing for preparing aquery and obtaining information from the Internet in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention. Processing commences at functionblock 2300 and immediately flows to function block 2310 to process thewrapper functionality to prepare for an Internet search utilizing a websearch engine. If the search is to utilize the Alta Vista search engine,then at function block 2330, the system takes information from themeeting record and forms a query in function blocks 2340 to 2360 forsubmittal to the search engine. If the search is to utilize the NewsPagesearch engine, then at function block 2320, the system takes informationfrom the meeting record and forms a query in function blocks 2321 to2328.

Alta Vista Search Engine:

A strength of the Alta Vista search engine is that it provides enhancedflexibility. Using its advance query method, one can construct all sortsof Boolean queries and rank the search however you want. However, one ofthe biggest drawbacks with Alta Vista is that it is not very good athandling a large query and is likely to give back irrelevant results. Ifwe can identify the topic and the company within a meeting text, we canform a pretty short but comprehensive query which will hopefully yieldbetter results. We also want to focus on the topics found. It may not beof much merit to the user to find out info about a company especially ifthe user already knows the company well and has had numerous meetingswith them. It's the topics they want to research on.

News Page Search Engine:

A strength of the News Page search engine is that it does a great jobsearching for the most recent news if you are able to give it a validcompany name. Therefore when we submit a query to the news page website, we send whatever company name we can identify and only if wecannot find one do we use the topics found to form a query. If neitherone is found, then no search is performed. The algorithm utilized toform the query to submit to Alta Vista is illustrated in FIG. 25. Thealgorithm that we will use to form the query to submit to News Page isillustrated in FIG. 26.

The following table describes in detail each function in accordance withan embodiment of the present invention. The order in which functionsappear mimics the process flow as closely as possible. When there aresituations in which a function is called several times, this functionwill be listed after the first function which calls it and itsdescription is not duplicated after every subsequent function whichcalls it. Main Public None This is the main function (BF.Main) Sub wherethe program first launches. It initializes BF with the appropriateparameters(e.g. Internet time-out, stoplist...) and calls GoBF to launchthe main part of the program. ProcessCommandLine Private Main Thisfunction parses the (BF.Main) Sub command line. It assumes that thedelimiter indicating the beginning of input from Munin is stored in theconstant CMD_SEPARATOR. CreateStopList Private Main This function setsup a stop (BF.Main) Function list for future use to parse out unwantedwords from the meeting text. There are commas on each side of each wordto enable straight checking. CreatePatterns Public Main This procedureis called once (BF.Pattern Sub when BF is first initialized to Match)create all the potential patterns that portions of the meeting text canbind to. A pattern can contain however many elements as needed. Thereare two types of elements. The first type of elements are indicators.These are real words which delimit the potential of a meeting field(e.g. company) to follow. Most of these indicators are stop words asexpected because stop words are words usually common to all meeting textso it makes sense they form patterns. The second type of elements arespecial strings which represent placeholders. A placeholder is always inthe form of $*$ where * can be either PEOPLE, COMPANY, TOPIC_UPPER,TIME, LOCATION or TOPIC_ALL. A pattern can begin with either one of thetwo types of elements and can be however long, involving however anynumber/type of elements. This procedure dynamically creates a newpattern record for each pattern in the table and it also dynamicallycreates new tAPatternElements for each element within a pattern. Inaddition, there is the concept of being able to substitute indicatorswithin a pattern. For example, the pattern $PEOPLE$ of $COMPANY$ issimilar to the pattern $PEOPLE$ from $COMPANY$. “from” is a substitutefor “of”. Our structure should be able to express such a need forsubstitution. GoBF Public Main This is a wrapper proceduror (BF.Main)Sub that calls both the parsing and the searching subroutines of the BF.It is also responsible for sending data back to Munin. ParseMeetingTextPublic GoBackGroundFinder This function takes the initial (BF.Parse)Function meeting text and identifies the userID of the record as well asother parts of the meeting text including the title, body, participantlist, location and time. In addition, we call a helper functionProcessStopList to eliminate all the unwanted words from the originalmeeting title and meeting body so that only keywords are left. Theinformation parsed out is stored in the MeetingRecord structure. Notethat this function does no error checking and for the most time assumesthat the meeting text string is correctly formatted by Munin. Theimportant variable is thisMeeting Record is the temp holder for all inforegarding current meeting. It's eventually returned to caller.FormatDelimitation Private ParseMeetingText, There are 4 ways in which(BF.Parse) DetermineNumWords, the delimiters can be placed.GetAWordFromString We take care of all these cases by reducing them downto Case 4 in which there are no delimiters around but only betweenfields in a string(e.g. A::B::C) DetermineNumWords PublicParseMeetingText, This functions determines (BF.Parse) FunctionProcessStopList how many words there are in a string (stInEvalString)The function assumes that each word is separated by a designatedseparator as specified in stSeparator. The return type is an integerthat indicates how many words have been found assuming each word in thestring is separated by stSeparator. This function is always used alongwith GetAWordFromString and should be called before callingGetAWordFromString. GetAWordFromString Public ParseMeetingText, Thisfunction extracts the ith (BF.Parse) Function ProcessStopList word ofthe string(stInEvalString) assuming that each word in the string isseparated by a designated separator contained in the variablestSeparator. In most cases, use this function with DetermineNumWords.The function returns the wanted word. This function checks to make surethat iInWordNum is within bounds so that i is not greater than the totalnumber of words in string or less than/equal to zero. If it is out ofbounds, we return empty string to indicate we can't get anything. We tryto make sure this doesn't happen by calling DetermineNumWords first.ParseAndCleanPhrase Private ParseMeetingText This function first grabsthe (BF.Parse) Function word and send it to CleanWord in order strip thestuff that nobody wants. There are things in parseWord that will killthe word, so we will need a method of looping through the body andrejecting words without killing the whole function i guess keepCleanWord and check a return value ok, now I have a word so I need tosend it down the parse chain. This chain goes ParseCleanPhrase ->CleanWord -> EvaluateWord. If the word gets through the entire chainwithout being killed, it will be added at the end to our keyword string.first would be the function that checks for “/” as a delimiter andextracts the parts of that. This I will call “StitchFace” (Denise ismore normal and calls it GetAWordFromString) if this finds words, theneach of these will be sent, in turn, down the chain. If these getthrough the entire chain without being added or killed then they will beadded rather than tossed. FindMin Private ParseAndCleanPhrase Thisfunction takes in 6 input (BF.Parse) Function values and evaluates tosee what the minimum non zero value is. It first creates an array as aholder so that we can sort the five input values in ascending order.Thus the minimum value will be the first non zero value element of thearray. If we go through entire array without finding a non zero value,we know that there is an error and we exit the function. CleanWordPrivate ParseAndCleanPhrase This function tries to clean (BF.Parse)Function up a word in a meeting text. It first of all determines if thestring is of a valid length. It then passes it through a series of teststo see it is clean and when needed, it will edit the word and stripunnecessary characters off of it. Such tests includes getting rid offile extensions, non chars, numbers etc. EvaluateWord PrivateParseAndCleanPhrase This function tests to see if (BF.Parse) Functionthis word is in the stop list so it can determine whether to eliminatethe word from the original meeting text. If a word is not in thestoplist, it should stay around as a keyword and this function exitsbeautifully with no errors. However, if the words is a stopword, anerror must be returned. We must properly delimit the input test stringso we don't accidentally retrieve sub strings. GoPatternMatch PublicGoBF This procedure is called (BF.Pattern Sub when our QueryMethod isMatch) set to complex query meaning we do want to do all the patternmatching stuff.It's a simple wrapper function which initializes somearrays and then invokes pattern matching on the title and the body.MatchPatterns Public GoPattern Match This procedure loops through(BF.Pattern Sub every pattern in the pattern Match) table and tries toidentify different fields within a meeting text specified bysInEvalString. For debugging purposes it also tries to tabulate how manytimes a certain pattern was triggered and stores it in gTabulateMatchesto see whichp pattern fired the most. gTabulateMatches is stored as aglobal because we want to be able to run a batch file of 40 or 50 teststrings and still be able to know how often a pattern was triggered.MatchAPattern Private MatchPatterns This function goes through(BF.Pattern Function each element in the current Match) pattern. Itfirst evaluates to determine whether element is a placeholder or anindicator. If it is a placeholder, then it will try to bind theplaceholder with some value. If it is an indicator, then we try tolocate it. There is a trick however. Depending on whether we are atcurrent element is the head of the pattern or not we want to takedifferent actions. If we are at the head, we want to look for theindicator or the placeholder. If we can't find it, then we know that thecurrent pattern doesn't exist and we quit. However, if it is not thehead, then we continue looking, because there may still be a headsomewhere. We retry in this case. MatchMeeting Private MatchAPatternThis function uses a big Field Function switch statement to first(BF.Pattern determine what kind of Match) placeholder we are talkingabout and depending on what type of placeholder, we have specificrequirements and different binding criteria as specified in thesubsequent functions called such as BindNames, BindTime etc. If bindingis successful we add it to our guessing record. BindNames PrivateMatchMeetingField In this function, we try to (BF.Pattern Function matchnames to the Match) corresponding placeholder $PEOPLE$. Names aredefined as any consecutive two words which are capitalized. We also whatto retrieve a series of names which are connected by and, or & so welook until we don't see any of these 3 separators anymore. Note that wedon't want to bind single word names because it is probably too generalanyway so we don't want to produce broad but irrelevant results. Thisfunction calls BindAFullName which binds one name so in a sinceBindNames collects all the results from BindAFullName BindAFullNamePrivate BindNames This function tries to bind a (BF.Pattern Functionfull name. If the $PEOPLE$ Match) placeholder is not the head of thepattern, we know that it has to come right at the beginning of the teststring because we've been deleting stuff off the head of the string allalong. If it is the head, we search until we find something that lookslike a full name. If we can't find it, then there's no such pattern inthe text entirely and we quit entirely from this pattern. This shouldeventually return us to the next pattern in MatchPatterns.GetNextWordAfterWhite Space Private BindAFullName, This function grabsthe next (BF.Pattern Function BindTime, word in a test string. It looksMatch) BindCompanyTopicLoc for the next word after white spaces, @ or/.The word is defined to end when we encounter another one of these whitespaces or separators. BindTime Private MatchMeetingField Get theimmediate next word (BF.Pattern Function and see if it looks like a timeMatch) pattern. If so we've found a time and so we want to add it to therecord. We probably should add more time patterns. But people don't seemto like to enter the time in their titles these days especially since wenow have tools like OutLook. BindCompanyTopicLoc PrivateMatchMeetingField This function finds a (BF.Pattern Function continuouscapitalized string Match) and binds it to stMatch which is passed byreference from MatchMeetingField. A continuous capitalized string is asequence of capitalized words which are not interrupted by things like,.etc. There's probably more stuff we can add to the list ofinterruptions. LocatePatternHead Private MatchAPattern This functiontries to locate (BF.Pattern Function an element which is an Match)indicator. Note that this indicator SHOULD BE AT THE HEAD of the patternotherwise it would have gone to the function LocateIndicator instead.Therefore, we keep on grabbing the next word until either there's noword for us to grab (quit) or if we find one of the indicators we arelooking for. ContainInArray Private LocatePatternHead, ‘This function isreally (BF.Pattern Function LocateIndicator simple. It loops through allMatch) the elements in the array’ to find a matching string.LocateIndicator Private MatchAPattern This function tries to locate(BF.Pattern Function an element which is an Match) indicator. Note thatthis indicator is NOT at the head of the pattern otherwise it would havegone to LocatePatternHead instead. Because of this, if our pattern is tobe satisfied, the next word we grab HAS to be the indicator or else wewould have failed. Thus we only grab one word, test to see if it is avalid indicator and then return result. InitializeGuessesRecord PrivateMatchAPattern This function reinitializes (BF.Pattern Sub our temporarytest structure Match) because we have already transferred the info tothe permanent structure, we can reinitialize it so they each have oneelement AddToMeetingRecord Private MatchAPattern This function is onlycalled (BF.Pattern Sub when we know that the Match) information storedin tInCurrGuesses is valid meaning that it represents legitimate guessesof meeting fields ready to be stored in the permanent record,tInMeetingRecord. We check to make sure that we do not store duplicatesand we also what to clean up what we want to store so that there's nocluttered crap such as punctuations, etc. The reason why we don't cleanup until now is to save time. We don't waste resources callingParseAndCleanPhrase until we know for sure that we are going to add itpermanently. NoDuplicateEntry Private AddToMeetingRecord This functionloops through (BF.Pattern Function each element in the array to Match)make sure that the test string aString is not the same as any of thestrings already stored in the array. Slightly different fromContainInArray. SearchAltaVista Public GoBackGroundFinder This functionprepares a (BF.Search) Function query to be submitted to AltaVistaSearch engine. It submits it and then parses the returning result in theappropriate format containing the title, URL and body/summary of eachstory retrieved. The number of stories retrieved is specified by theconstant NUM_AV_STORIES. Important variables include stURLAltaVista usedto store query to submit stResultHTML used to store html from pagespecified by stURLAltaVista. ConstructAltaVistaURL PrivateSearchAltaVista This function constructs the (BF.Search) Function URLstring for the alta vista search engine using the advanced query searchmode. It includes the keywords to be used, the language and how we wantto rank the search. Depending on whether we want to use the results ofour pattern matching unit, we construct our query differently.ConstructSimpleKeyWord Private ConstructAltaVistaURl, This functionmarches down (BF.Search) Function ConstructNewsPageURL the list ofkeywords stored in the stTitleKW or stBodyKW fields of the input meetingrecord and links them up into one string with each keyword separated bya connector as determined by the input variable stInConnector. Returnsthis newly constructed string. ConstructComplexAVKeyWord PrivateConstructAltaVistaURL This function constructs the (BF.Search) Functionkeywords to be send to the AltaVista site. Unlike ConstructSimpleKeyWordwhich simply takes all the keywords from the title to form the query,this function will look at the results of BF's pattern matching processand see if we are able to identify any specific company names or topicsfor constructing the queries. Query will include company and topicidentified and default to simple query if we cannot identify eithercompany or topic. JoinWithConnectors Private ConstructComplexAVKeyWord,This function simply (BF.Search) Function ConstructComplexNPKeyWord,replaces the spaces between RefineWithRank the words within the stringwith a connector which is specified by the input. RefineWithDate PrivateConstructAltaVistaURL This function constructs the (NOT Function dateportion of the alta vista CALLED query and returns this portion AT THEof the URL as a string. It MOMENT) makes sure that alta vista(BF.Search) searches for articles within the past PAST_NDAYS.RefineWithRank Private ConstructAltaVistaURL This function constructsthe (BF.Search) Function string needed to passed to AltaVista in orderto rank an advanced query search. If we are constructing the simplequery we will take in all the keywords from the title. For the complexquery, we will take in words from company and topic, much the same waywe formed the query in ConstructComplexAVKeyWord. IdentifyBlock PublicSearchAltaVista, This function extracts the (BF.Parse) FunctionSearchNewsPage block within a string marked by the beginning and theending tag given as inputs starting at a certain location(iStart). Theblock retrieved does not include the tags themselves. If the blockcannot be identified with the specified delimiters, we returnunsuccessful through the parameter iReturnSuccess passed to use byreference. The return type is the block retrieved. IsOpenURLError PublicSearchAltaVista, This function determines (BF.Error) FunctionSearchNewsPage whether the error encountered is that of a timeout error.It restores the mouse to default arrow and then returns true if it is atime out or false otherwise. SearchNewsPage Public GoBackGroundFinderThis function prepares a (BF.Search) Function query to be submitted toNewsPage Search engine. It submits it and then parses the returningresult in the appropriate format containing the title, URL andbody/summary of each story retrieved. The number of stories retrieved isspecified by the constant UM_NP_STORIES ConstructNewsPageURL PrivateSearchNewsPage This function constructs the (BF.Search) Function URL tosend to the NewsPage site. It uses the information contained in theinput meeting record to determine what keywords to use. Also dependingwhether we want simple or complex query, we call different functions toform strings. ConstructComplexNPKeyWord Private ConstructNewsPageURLThis function constructs the (BF.Search) Function keywords to be send tothe NewsPage site. UnlikeConstructKeyWordString which simply takes allthe keywords from the title to form the query, this function will lookat the results of BF's pattern matching process and see if we are ableto identify any specific company names or topics for constructing thequeries. ConstructOverallResult Private GoBackGroundFinder This functiontakes in as (BF.Main) Function input an array of strings (stInStories)and a MeetingRecord which stores the information for the currentmeeting. Each element in the array stores the stories retrieved fromeach information source. The function simply constructs the appropriateoutput to send to Munin including a return message type to let Muninknow that it is the BF responding and also the original user_id andmeeting title so Munin knows which meeting BF is talking about.ConnectAndTransferToMunin Public GoBackGroundFinder This function allows(BF.Main) Sub Background Finder to connect to Munin and eventuallytransport information to Munin. We will be using the UDP protocolinstead of the TCP protocol so we have to set up the remote host andport correctly. We use a global string to store gResult Overall becausealthough it is unnecessary with UDP, it is needed with TCP and if weever switch back don't want to change code. DisconnectFromMuninAndQuitPublic (BF.Main) Sub

FIG. 24 shows a flowchart of the actual code utilized to prepare andsubmit searches to the Alta Vista and NewsPage search engines inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Processingcommences at function block 2401 where a command line is utilized toupdate a calendar entry with specific calendar information. The messageis next posted in accordance with function block 2402 and a meetingrecord is created to store the current meeting information in accordancewith function block 2403. Then, in function block 2404 the query issubmitted to the Alta Vista search engine and in function block 2405,the query is submitted to the NewsPage search engine. When a message isreturned from the search engine, it is stored in a results datastructure as shown in function block 2406 and the information isprocessed and stored in summary form in a file for use in preparationfor the meeting as detailed in function block 2407.

FIG. 25 provides more detail on creating the query in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention. Processing commences at functionblock 2505 where the meeting record is parsed to obtain potentialcompanies, people, topics, location and a time. Then, in function block2506, at least one topic is identified and in function block 2507, atleast one company name is identified and finally in function block 2508,a decision is made on what material to transmit to the file for ultimateconsumption by the user.

FIG. 26 is a variation on the query theme presented in FIG. 25. Ameeting record is parsed in function block 2600, a company is identifiedin function block 2620, a topic is identified in function block 2630 andfinally in function block 2640 the topic and or the company is utilizedin formulating the query.

While various embodiments have been described above, it should beunderstood that they have been presented by way of example only, and notlimitation. Thus, the breadth and scope of a preferred embodiment shouldnot be limited by any of the above described exemplary embodiments, butshould be defined only in accordance with the following claims and theirequivalents.

1.-20. (canceled)
 21. A method for a knowledgebase framework in abackground finder, the method comprising: querying a source of targetinformation; pattern matching the target information to identify a fieldwithin the target information; obtaining information relating to theidentified field from at least one information source utilizing anetwork; generating a knowledge model-based index for the obtainedinformation using a knowledge model, wherein the generated knowledgemodel-based index comprises a plurality of items each associated with atleast some of the obtained information; and displaying the knowledgemodel-based index to a user utilizing the network.
 22. A method asrecited in claim 21, further comprising permitting the selection by theuser of at least one of the items of the knowledge model-based index;and displaying the information associated with the selected item to theuser.
 23. A method as recited in claim 22, wherein displaying theinformation associated with the selected item to the user comprisesutilizing the network to retrieve the associated information from the atleast one information source from which the associated information wasobtained.
 24. A method as recited in claim 21, wherein pattern matchingcomprises extracting a list of keywords from text included in the sourceof target information.
 25. A method as recited in claim 24, whereinextracting a list of keywords comprises logically combining the keywordsto form a search query.
 26. A method as recited in claim 21, wherein thesource of target information is a meeting record that stores all thepertinent information concerning an upcoming meeting.
 27. A method asrecited in claim 21, wherein the at least one information sourcecomprises at least one of an internal source having controlled access oran external source having uncontrolled access utilizing a wide areanetwork, or combinations thereof
 28. A method as recited in claim 21,further comprising monitoring the at least one information source forupdated information relating to at least one of the items of theknowledge model-based index; and generating a notice regarding theupdated information for receipt by the user via the network.
 29. Amethod as recited in claim 28, wherein the at least one informationsource to be monitored is selectable by the user.
 30. A method asrecited in claim 21, further comprising permitting the user to input asearch term utilizing the network, searching the knowledge model-basedindex for items associated with the search term, and displaying items ofthe knowledge model-based index associated with the search term to theuser utilizing the network.
 31. A computer program embodied on acomputer readable medium for a knowledgebase framework in a backgroundfinder, the computer program comprising: a code segment that isexecutable to perform pattern matching to identify at least one keywordwithin a data record; a code segment that is executable to obtaininformation related to the identified at least one keyword from at leastone source utilizing a network; a code segment that is executable togenerate a knowledge model-based index for the obtained informationusing a knowledge model, wherein the generated knowledge model-basedindex comprises a plurality of items each associated with at least someof the obtained information; and a code segment that is executable todisplay the knowledge model-based index to a user utilizing the network.32. A computer program as recited in claim 31, further comprising a codesegment that is executable to permit the user to select at least one ofthe items of the knowledge model-based index.
 33. A computer program asrecited in claim 32, further comprising a code segment that isexecutable to display to the user the information associated with aselected item utilizing the network.
 34. A computer program as recitedin claim 33, further comprising a code segment that is executable toutilize the network to retrieve the associated information from thesource from which the associated information was obtained.
 35. Acomputer program as recited in claim 31, further comprising a codesegment that is executable to provide a restriction criteria that isselectable by a user to limit the information obtained.
 36. A computerprogram as recited in claim 31, wherein the pattern matching to identifykeywords is limited to a predetermined portion of the data record.
 37. Acomputer program as recited in claim 31, wherein the at least one sourcecomprises at least one of an internal source having controlled access oran external source having uncontrolled access utilizing a wide areanetwork, or combinations thereof.
 38. A computer program as recited inclaim 31, further comprising a code segment that is executable tomonitor the at least one source for updated information related to atleast one of the items of the knowledge model-based index utilizing thenetwork; a code segment that is executable to generate a noticeregarding the updated information, and a code segment that is executableto transmit the notice to the user utilizing the network.
 39. A computerprogram as recited in claim 38, further comprising a code segment thatis executable to permit a user to select the at least one source to bemonitored.
 40. A computer program as recited in claim 31, wherein thepattern matching is performed with a template that specifies a structureof a phrase that is likely to appear in the data record.
 41. A systemfor a knowledgebase framework in a background finder, comprising: logicto perform pattern matching to identify keywords within a data record;logic to obtain information relating to the identified keywords from atleast one source utilizing a network as a function of the identifiedkeywords; logic to generate a knowledge model-based index for theobtained information using a knowledge model, wherein the generatedknowledge model-based index comprises a plurality of items eachassociated with at least some of the obtained information; logic todisplay the knowledge model-based index to a user utilizing the network;logic to permit the user to select at least one of the items of theknowledge model-based index; and logic to display the informationassociated with the selected item to the user utilizing the network. 42.A system as recited in claim 41, further comprising logic to monitor theat least one source for updated information relating to at least one ofthe items of the knowledge model-based index utilizing the network. 43.A system as recited in claim 42, further comprising logic to generate anotice regarding the updated information, and logic to transmit thenotice to the user utilizing the network.